|
The Queen Alexandra's Birdwing is distributed, extremely locally, in patches of the lowland forests of a limited region within the northern province of Papua New Guinea (PNG). Because of their beauty and size, collectors from the U.S., Europe, and Japan prize birdwing butterflies too. A single Queen Alexandra's specimen can fetch thousands of dollars, and hundreds of specimens have been sent overseas.
The species is now very rare throughout its range, though exactly how rare is subject to interpretation, as Dr. Parsons points out. "We have found the Queen Alexandra in previously unknown places, and locally it can be very common, but it's highly threatened overall by palm oil plantation expansion, and logging activity in particular."
|